Author Topic: Is warfare part of being human?  (Read 6950 times)

Offline Frolie [Jellykid]

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Is warfare part of being human?
« on: December 31, 2012, 02:23:01 AM »
Is war integral to humanity?



     Violence is primal. Since our earliest ancestors clawed their way from
the ocean, it's been dog-eat-dog. A struggle for food, for women, for habitat, or
something similar. Conflict, struggle, violence; they're all part of being human.


But war isn't.

     What is war, in it's most unadulterated form? It's a battle not for yourself,
but for someone else.  You aren't being benefited any more; it's not a
battle to fuck a woman so you can continue your species. It's now all
about resources, territories; defending your god or defending your leader. Point being here,
humanity is about survival, war is about profit.


For example, see these picture below as reference:


This is a graph of Haliburton's stock price, and how it has doubled
since our involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's also interesting to note (though I
couldn't find a graph to visually represent it), that while Haliburton's stock has doubled,
so has the mortality rate of US soldiers.


Obviously, I encourage you to leave your opinion on this philosiphical debate below. I look
forward to both reading your observations & interpretations, and commenting on them as well.


Cheers, Frolie
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Offline [LP]GMK-MRL

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Re: Is warfare part of being human?
« Reply #1 on: December 31, 2012, 02:35:56 AM »
From studying the human psyche from a distance and being an observer, i've noticed that humans are natrually competetive. It's why we make sports to compensate for violence. But what really puzzles me is that humans are genetically homed towards compassion and empathy. Yet, war is abundant and always occuring. Maybe some humans just have compassion for something they believe is worth fighting for like a sacred religion and the well-being of it's followers, or the compassion for the saftey of one's people....

You know, I found something very interesting in the most suprising of places. I heard this code being recited in Star Wars The Old Republic as the Sith Code. It sounds a lot like how humans think, but not what they say. Well, the pessimist at least.

Here is the code.




Humans always strive for power. Always, it's a proven fact throughout history and in Science. We naturally compete for dominiance over another due to our survival instincts. Humans in the past believed that the one with the most power, deserves the most resoruces and the most respect, and that's how it was back in the Primal Age of mankind. But then, we started to revolutionize and realize that power and strength is within all of us and we are all equal. This causes resistance to the assertive forces of power. Honestly, I see it everyday, when i'm at work, when i'm at home, when i'm at school, when i'm on the forum....It's everywhere. Through Power comes Victory. The true question is, how does Power cause Victory if met with resistance? War....and what do humans strive for? Power....so yes, war is integral to humanity because it is a never ending loop and war will always occur somewhere in the world on the smallest or largest of scales.

If you truly think about it, Peace really is a lie.

Offline Pielolz

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Re: Is warfare part of being human?
« Reply #2 on: December 31, 2012, 02:53:14 AM »
Want is a natural human thing, and from want stems greed, whatever you desire is in possession of some one or something else. If you cannot get it through diplomacy, you will resort to more direct ways. If those fail, violence will always be the solution. Always; Japan wanted Oil in WW2 to fund their vendetta against China, they took it. Genghis Khan wanted revenge and the wealth of Chinese cities, so he took both. Whenever humans are passionate or lustful for something, either it being revenge, possessions, wealth, or simply to vindicate themselves, they will do what they have to. To get on war, war is simply one man with this fiery passion whom has managed to motivate others to aid him with the promise of power and riches.


Example, on a space war server, I wanted the space of a planet due to it's massive amount of ore rich asteroids, but the owner of it said "No, it's mine." I needed it to fuel my ship and load my guns. So what did I do? I promised six guys that they'll get a slice of it. I needed it, and so did they, and under my banner we destroyed the owner of the planet.

Thus? War. It's simple; a necessity outweighs the human lives that currently own it. As long as there is money and power, so will there be some one who wants it and will go to any means to get it.

Offline [LP]GMK-MRL

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Re: Is warfare part of being human?
« Reply #3 on: December 31, 2012, 02:58:51 AM »
Quote
Want is a natural human thing, and from want stems greed, whatever you desire is in possession of some one or something else. If you cannot get it through diplomacy, you will resort to more direct ways. If those fail, violence will always be the solution.

Humans not only used violence, but they used manipulation and conspiracy to obtain what they desire. They would also use cooperation, but depending on the person, the offer would either not be fufilled or it would be fufilled.

I.E

Quote
on a space war server, I wanted the space of a planet due to it's massive amount of ore rich asteroids, but the owner of it said "No, it's mine." I needed it to fuel my ship and load my guns. So what did I do? I promised six guys that they'll get a slice of it. I needed it, and so did they, and under my banner we destroyed the owner of the planet.

Offline Dallas

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Re: Is warfare part of being human?
« Reply #4 on: December 31, 2012, 09:12:38 AM »
Yeah, of course it's in our nature, we love violence. It's the most basic thing we crave along with food and fucking. We're still savages, we're not space-faring gods yet.

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Re: Is warfare part of being human?
« Reply #5 on: December 31, 2012, 11:22:37 AM »
I believe, and have observed that Humanity is both infinitely violent, infinitely compassionate, and the closer you look the more you'll realize that slowly humanity is moving away from violence.
Humanity always learns something from war, in World war one, we learned that maybe the world should work harder and prevent such a loss of life like that. World war two taught us that compassion and team work will trump violence and evil, it united powers that normally would be enemies to fight "True Evil".

With each major conflict, we learn something more about our selves, since the stick and stone humanity has been killing each other, we've done it so long that yes, yes it is part of being human, but we must look at what's been at the heart of the conflict. People say "War never changes" when in reality, yes, yes it does, the tactics, the weapons, and the map changes but all that is moot compared to what really changes, Humanity. The peoples reason for going in to that conflict ALWAYS changes, never mind why nations go to war, that's just old men sending young ones to their deaths, I'm talking about the people, the people who go in, and risk their lives in that conflict, the reasons always change, wither its "Because its the right thing to do" "Kind and country" or more compassionate reasons such as family, friends.

I believe, Humanity will slowly move away from warfare with each other, and I think, that moment will be when humanity discovers another intelligent species other then ourselves, now if we start waging war with them or they with us, we won't know till we get there.

Warfare is as big of a part of being human as Compassion and love, but we must also remember that war in always changing, and we must let it change for the better, we shouldn't be going to war over profits, we should be going to war over human rights. We shouldn't be going to war over religion, we should be going to war for freedom, for all people. And it is up to each and every one of us to change war for the better, but remember that sometimes, at least for now, the deeds and deaths of the few, is sadly needed for freedom to survive due to this "Lust for power" that ya'll speak of.

Sorry if this post is a bit all over the place, but this is a topic I feel very compassionate about.
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Offline hogs

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Re: Is warfare part of being human?
« Reply #6 on: January 03, 2013, 06:19:02 AM »
I believe, Humanity will slowly move away from warfare with each other, and I think, that moment will be when humanity discovers another intelligent species other then ourselves, now if we start waging war with them or they with us, we won't know till we get there.

yet we send out a voyager out of our solar system and beyond containing a gold plated record of our culture history coming to earth and our whole structure and our wildlife and shit
why would we do that if we knew we were going to wage war on them

yeah sure it might happen (chances are we won't find intelligent life at all, just cells and shit) but we would actually have to have a reason seeing as humans will wage war based on greed and want -- well at least that's how i see it.
it'd be fucking retarded for us to wage war on something a.) we know nothing about b.) we don't get to study and find out what they're all about and c.) has no threat to us

Offline Mr Jive

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Re: Is warfare part of being human?
« Reply #7 on: January 03, 2013, 10:13:04 PM »
I believe, and have observed that Humanity is both infinitely violent, infinitely compassionate, and the closer you look the more you'll realize that slowly humanity is moving away from violence.
Humanity always learns something from war, in World war one, we learned that maybe the world should work harder and prevent such a loss of life like that. World war two taught us that compassion and team work will trump violence and evil, it united powers that normally would be enemies to fight "True Evil".

With each major conflict, we learn something more about our selves, since the stick and stone humanity has been killing each other, we've done it so long that yes, yes it is part of being human, but we must look at what's been at the heart of the conflict. People say "War never changes" when in reality, yes, yes it does, the tactics, the weapons, and the map changes but all that is moot compared to what really changes, Humanity. The peoples reason for going in to that conflict ALWAYS changes, never mind why nations go to war, that's just old men sending young ones to their deaths, I'm talking about the people, the people who go in, and risk their lives in that conflict, the reasons always change, wither its "Because its the right thing to do" "Kind and country" or more compassionate reasons such as family, friends.

I believe, Humanity will slowly move away from warfare with each other, and I think, that moment will be when humanity discovers another intelligent species other then ourselves, now if we start waging war with them or they with us, we won't know till we get there.

Warfare is as big of a part of being human as Compassion and love, but we must also remember that war in always changing, and we must let it change for the better, we shouldn't be going to war over profits, we should be going to war over human rights. We shouldn't be going to war over religion, we should be going to war for freedom, for all people. And it is up to each and every one of us to change war for the better, but remember that sometimes, at least for now, the deeds and deaths of the few, is sadly needed for freedom to survive due to this "Lust for power" that ya'll speak of.

Sorry if this post is a bit all over the place, but this is a topic I feel very compassionate about.

I quite like this idea but I think I have a slightly alternative view (on the first part)

As humans develop we end up banding together as larger groups, humans started off as small tribes of nomads, they evolved into small settlements, small settlements evolve into kingdoms, kingdoms become countries and countries become continents and so on and so forth. As this long process happened war and conflict changed, with the small tribe a 'war' would be between two tribes, the victims of this war would be the ones who participated. As Humans evolve from this point the wars begin to affect more and more people, at some point in our History war was fought between the soldiers, but as your enemy is represented by a larger mass of people you need to target more people and so methods of doing this evolve. Eventually we have the creation of bombs allowing us to kill more and more, but as this happens another thing happens, the war become less desirable. At the very beginning, even if the whole tribe is wiped out that might only be 10-20 people, but now if you want to defeat your opponent you have to kill millions.

So as Humans band together more, warfare has a far more negative effect, causing war to be less desirable and therefore happen less frequently. However the downside of this is that when war does happen it become much more devastating, so I believe that the reason wars within the first world countries don't really happen anymore is because we know that the next one will be far worse than the last. Anyway going a bit off track from the original post here but it’s just an idea about why war in the western world is becoming less frequent.
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Offline Kevin

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Re: Is warfare part of being human?
« Reply #8 on: January 04, 2013, 10:22:39 PM »
Violence is in our nature, simply put, I think war is just a sort of violence orgy. It also stems, from what those before me said, greed and want.

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Offline Hazard Time

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Re: Is warfare part of being human?
« Reply #9 on: January 05, 2013, 02:11:31 AM »
The great Prussian general, Carl von Clausevitz, once said, "War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means".  So you can imagine how war first became a part of human nature:  One tribe of hunter-gatherers was not faring well, where as another was.  The poorer triber would ask the other to spare some food, as they were starving.  However, the more successful tribe would refuse.  They had problems of their own, and they worked hard for their food.  They don't see how helping a tribe of possible competitors will be of any benefit to them.  So, desperate and hungry, the poor tribe decides that if the others will not listen to reason, then they will have to demonstrate their desperation.

Of course, conflicts nowadays are now more complex, and some (Such as Hitler's invasion of Poland) seem to have no ties to diplomacy at all.  So it is my theory that, like the idiot who yells in all caps in OOC because he knows he will get attention, most people are skipping diplomacy and going straight to violence because they know for a certainty that a reaction will be made.

Offline [LP]GMK-MRL

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Re: Is warfare part of being human?
« Reply #10 on: January 07, 2013, 12:03:12 AM »
The great Prussian general, Carl von Clausevitz, once said, "War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means".  So you can imagine how war first became a part of human nature:  One tribe of hunter-gatherers was not faring well, where as another was.  The poorer triber would ask the other to spare some food, as they were starving.  However, the more successful tribe would refuse.  They had problems of their own, and they worked hard for their food.  They don't see how helping a tribe of possible competitors will be of any benefit to them.  So, desperate and hungry, the poor tribe decides that if the others will not listen to reason, then they will have to demonstrate their desperation.

Of course, conflicts nowadays are now more complex, and some (Such as Hitler's invasion of Poland) seem to have no ties to diplomacy at all.  So it is my theory that, like the idiot who yells in all caps in OOC because he knows he will get attention, most people are skipping diplomacy and going straight to violence because they know for a certainty that a reaction will be made.

AND THEY DON'T CARE WHAT THE REACTION IS BECAUSE THEY ARE TOO IMPATIENT FOR DIPLOMACY TO PRODUCE ONE

(Just wanted to provide an example of all caps lol)

 

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